


Everybody Hurts

by softmoonlight



Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Barriss Offee Redemption, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Choking (Star Wars), Gen, Inquisitor Barriss Offee, Lots of it, Luminara Unduli Lives, Luminara Unduli Needs A Hug, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Post-Betrayal, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Star Wars: Rebels References, Strained Relationships, Suicidal Thoughts, The rating is for violence, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, being this branches off from the canon ending for Luminara shown there, the very very start of it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 07:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26848195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight
Summary: The line between reality and illusion blurred long ago, when one of them decided invading her mind was the best way to inflict pain, and never quite stopped when the rest left her to rot. Luminara has been rescued and killed and woken up to find it was all a dream and imprisoned anew so many times she flinches at the slightest movement.The reign of the Sith brings unimaginable pain, but maybe there’s one silver lining.
Relationships: Barriss Offee & Luminara Unduli, Luminara Unduli & Darth Vader
Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952500
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48
Collections: Whumptober, Whumptober 2020





	Everybody Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt choices: on the run | failed escape | **rescue**
> 
> This fic is me attempting to reconcile the canon endings I loathe for both of these characters while still keeping the angst.

The new Sith Lord is hell made real, a monster pulled out of every fable and molded into one. More bloodcurdling just to look at than Dooku or even Maul ever were. Breaths like hissing snakes, consistent and endless, as he stands there regarding Luminara for so long she wants to flinch at every single cycle. Instead she stares ahead, though she knows this is likely it. Her end.

She may have survived the initial Sith coup, but she was never going to last much longer beyond that.

When he speaks, Luminara shudders bodily. His voice is unnatural, mechanical, too deliberate, too slinking with ill intent borne towards her.

“You could have stopped it,” is what he says. Taunting.

She hates that she knows exactly what he means. Her own mind has been taunting her with that line for the last six months.

_If only I had known. If only I could have reached her._

“Perhaps I could have,” she replies evenly, even as it hurts to think about, because she is determined not to be provoked. “But no one could have known what was planned. People are flawed. They make mistakes.”

The Sith has his hand around her throat before she can even finish speaking. It's a prosthetic—too strong to be natural—but she knows what’s actually closing her airway slowly and painfully is the Force, curled tight around him like a noose.

Luminara fights it instinctively. She scratches at his arm, she tries to kick out, she tries to breathe around it, but he is unrelenting, pure malevolence distilled into the perfect conduit. Her breaths turn gasping, she can’t see, she needs to breathe _so badly_ —but it’s almost over, it’s almost about to end, and everything’s going slack and the world’s turning blurry.

At that last second, the Sith throws her backward into the wall, so hard something cracks. “You will pay for your mistakes, Luminara Unduli. Slowly and painfully. You'll pay for _all_ the mistakes your kind made.”

The Sith does not return again. He _delegates_ the torture to his pseudo-apprentices, overeager golden-eyed children spawned straight from the worst places in the galaxy. They’re new to the Dark Side, and they all _experiment_ on Luminara. Testing which causes maximum pain, which makes her scream in anguish the loudest.

Turn to the dark with us, they tell her. Turn or you will hurt unimaginably. Just _give in_ , look how easy it is.

_No,_ is the only word she says to any of them. Over and over.

They say they are better, that they feel untouchable, but she can see the gauntness of their faces, the red-rimmed eyes, lifeless skin, brittle hair. Luminara aches from intentionally inflicted pain; the Inquisitors are coasting on brief highs while the dark erodes their insides. She refuses to become that.

She remembers electrocution, lightsaber burns, a knife and spilled blood. A human would’ve been dead in days from the extent of the injuries, but Mirialans are not quite the same, and that keeps her alive even when the pain is such that she wishes she could die.

Less of them hurt her now, but that’s because she’s so fragile one more injury could end her life, and because, judging by the muffled screams she often hears, they have fresh prey. She would be sick at the thought, wondering which poor soul managed to escape but ultimately wind up with this fate, if she could be sick at all anymore. Her body is failing.

Eventually, all that is left are the questions she asks herself in the dark, choking on sobs.

_What did I do to deserve this?_

_Was I a bad person?_

_When will I finally die?_

The line between reality and illusion blurred long ago, when one of them decided invading her mind was the best way to inflict pain, and never quite stopped when the rest left her to rot. Luminara has been rescued and killed and woken up to find it was all a dream and imprisoned anew so many times she flinches at the slightest movement. 

The specific people vary. She has seen her agemates, Obi-Wan and Quinlan and Kit and Bant and Siri and Agen; she has seen her own master, long since dead; Cyslin Myr, Mace’s master and a Mirialan like her who sometimes took her on cultural excursions as a padawan; Master Yoda, who would always comfort anyone who needed it. They appear in all ages: Kit as an old man she never knew him as, Obi-Wan as a five-year-old child, Quinlan as a cocksure twentysomething.

Barriss always hurts the most. She hurts more than any flesh wound ever could.

This time, it is Barriss who enters her vision. She wears an Inquisitor’s uniform, which is a new development, and there’s another set of clothes tucked under her arms. Her eyes are her natural deep blue, not the yellow they became. She takes Luminara in almost _nervously,_ sets her jaw, and lingers in the doorway.

“I will not endure this again,” Luminara croaks. 

She can’t speak, not truly, because her screams have rubbed her throat raw, because her mouth is so dry from untold starvation, because she can no longer even raise her head. Because she doesn’t want to.

“Master, snap out of it, we don’t have much time!” Barriss hisses. She throws a panicked glance over her shoulder before finally stepping into the cell. The pile of clothes—which Luminara recognizes as another Inquisitors' uniform—lands at her feet without much ceremony. “Put those on.”

Ah, so this one is an escape plot. The Inquisitor must be running out of ideas.

Luminara couldn't, even if she wanted to. Her legs were just freshly broken as a “checkup” from one Inquisitor.

“I’m...quite fine here, thank you,” she slurs at not-Barriss.

Barriss, in turn, looks visibly more panicked, like the youngling she’d been when they first met. “Kriff. Kriff. Okay, sorry, Master, for what I’m about to do.” She brandishes a hypospray seemingly from thin air and injects it into Luminara’s neck before she can process what’s happening. 

Luminara drops like a stone, her last thought as she blacks out being _finally, I can be free. It’s over.  
_

* * *

But her suffering is never over, for she wakes to the familiar feeling of lying curled up in a berth on a ship currently coasting in hyperspace. Her body still aches, but everything is duller, softer, and a glance at her skin reveals fading bruises and cuts, and even some scars.

Strange.

Luminara blinks slowly, trying to puzzle out where the Inquisitor has placed her this time. 

Perhaps back in the Clone Wars, aboard the _Tranquility?_ No, it appears smaller in make.

She steps into the hall, and determines it appears to be a corvette of some sort, although not one she’s familiar with. There’s only a few places she can go, so she tries the cockpit first.

Barriss is still in the illusion with her. She sits at the controls, fiddling with the buttons idly as she stares out into the endless blue sky of hyperspace.

It means giving in, but she’s wanted...she’s wanted to see Barriss for so long...so she decides to play along.

“Careful what you touch when you aren’t minding your surroundings,” Luminara says, striding forward to slip into the copilot’s seat. “You never know what you may accidentally set off.”

Barriss jumped the moment she began speaking, and is now staring at her with an odd sort of shyness. She too looks like she has been put through hell, based on the new scars across her face.

“I remember you always did scold me for that,” she manages, punctuating it with a small huff of a laugh.

“Of course you remember. This is my memory.” Best to remind the Sithling that she has not lost awareness.

Barriss frowns. “N-no, Master, it’s not a memory. After I knocked you out, I dressed you as an Inquisitor and dragged you out of the spire with the Force, pretending I’d just killed you.”

It’s not a lie.

Luminara doesn’t know what to do except jump up from her chair and step back, torn between horror and gratitude and a pressing need to _hug_ her.

Barriss. Real, living Barriss.

Who Fell, betrayed the Jedi Order, and bombed the Temple.

Who broke her heart.

Her expression falls. “I should have known it was too good to be true. You should not have been that happy to see me.” She rubs her face and groans. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I must explain how I wound up there.”

Luminara cautiously lowers herself into the far seat at the back, then motions for her to go on.

“After I was...after I was taken away, I wasn’t put in jail. I was the first one sent to the Fortress Inquisitorius. Sidious kept me there, training me slightly in the Dark Side when he had time.” She bit her lip. “I wasn’t allowed to leave, but I didn’t try that hard. I was too scared to face the rest of the galaxy, and in the meantime I was drunk on the Dark.

“Then Order 66 happened, and a week later, new recruits showed up. Inquisitors. I got to see Sidious’ intentions for me, got choked by Vader the moment he first saw me. I saw the Republic become the Empire and the Jedi Order crash and burn. I saw what I had truly been advocating for, and I wanted to stop. I never meant for it to go _this_ far. I intended to escape, but then I discovered they had you.

“No one would believe me asking to torture you personally, alone, because of course they’d suspect me of using it to try and escape. I had to make them trust me. I...did some things. I mercy killed several captive Jedi on the brink of a mental breakdown and turn to the Dark, because we couldn’t have Sith acolytes multiplying, and made it look like I had tortured them to death. The others, including Vader, finally started to believe I was truly ruthless.

“The close scrutiny fell off me and onto newer trainees. Vader began to leave more and more to participate in enforcement campaigns against rebelling planets. I was able to figure out when I would be alone, and you would be alone. I waited, and then I struck. I got both of us out, jumping to hyperspace just as Vader came into realspace and noticed.

“You were...so badly hurt, I thought you were going to die. I gave you every baby’s patch I had, and I tried...I did healing like I used to, before...it worked. Now here we are.” In her lap, she primly folded one palm over the top of her hand and held still.

Luminara doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how she even _feels_ about that explanation. So she falls back on the question she’s wanted to ask her for a long time now.

“What happened to you, Barriss? You know if you had an issue, you could have talked to me. You could have taken it up in a forum with the Council! I had to learn you’d Fallen from a holo conference with them after everything was already over!”

Barriss bows her head. “I just—got tired of sitting and being quiet, and I made myself act, with no thoughts for consequences. I got caught up in it. Became convinced I was right. Fell before I even realized.”

“Killed people. Tormented Letta. Wrote off your entire family, denounced them— _us._ Framed Ahsoka and let her be tried publicly by the Senate. Barriss…”

“I know! I know it was horrible! I just—I chose not to embrace the Dark anymore. I saved you. Isn’t that a good start?”

She considers. “It’s the start of something.” She stands up, deliberately not acknowledging Barriss’ crestfallen expression—not because she _wants_ to be distant, but because the pain of everything is closing in.

Contrary to what the younglings used to say about Luminara, she is not detached or cold. But grief is a terrible thing, and she cannot stay here right now.

“You hurt a lot of people, Barriss. Including me. But I am not important here, it is the damage you did. It’s a start, and I applaud you for refusing the Dark in the end—although remember, we must work every day not to Fall—but I am still deeply hurt. I need to meditate on this. I need...some space before I am ready to try and act the way we used to. Is that understandable?”

Barriss nods. She doesn’t look entirely satisfied, but there’s enough promise for the future that Luminara knows she’ll let it lie for the time being.

Luminara turns back, briefly laying a hand on Barriss’ shoulder. The younger woman stiffens but doesn’t move away.

“Despite everything, I am glad you are okay, padawan. I am glad you survived, and I hope we will grow back together someday.”

Barriss nods again, curt, biting her lip hard.

“Thank you for rescuing me. I can only imagine how hard that must have been.”

Luminara turns away and puts the needed space between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Not to get on a soapbox, (and simultaneously out myself instantly to anyone from a specific discord server lmao) but I have a conspiracy theory that _someone_ working on tcw/rebels hates Mirialans. Between the bombing (done by one of the only sw characters to wear head coverings and a character who was previously established as a healer), to Gree’s helmet being a trophy in Thrawn’s office, to the nearly pedophilic Seventh Sister being a Mirialan, to the s7 backstory of the Martez sisters being almost comically overdone to be “kick the dog” levels of awful, to Luminara’s horrific, violating death revealed in Rebels, all of it just feels...so unnecessary and forced and intentionally meant to make people hate them? It’s all very suspicious.


End file.
